Christmas 2018 and New year 2019 and the start of a new career!

Where have the past months gone? Now it is nearly February and I haven't written for two months. Oh yay?!in the meantime, I have also become a registered wedding celebrant and am waiting nervously and excitedly for my first wedding! Website is https://barbarahardingcelebrant.weebly.com/

Christmas has flown by, and of course the inevitable finishing up of my best ever Christmas cake. I was sad to see it go, but pleased too that I could stop being tempted to snack on it!

Christmas at Mark and Emma's new home was fabulous, with Mark in charge of the kitchen, and David and Emma's parents also there, all of us contributing to the day and the incredible spread of food. What a fantastic house they have. We all stayed the night - plenty of room.

Stormy was unimpressed by the invasion of his new home and took himself off to bed, under the covers!

David was keen to try out SUP before purchasing a board, so he and Mark set off one day from the beautiful Corsair Bay, in near perfect conditions. David took to paddling ' like a duck to water' and off they went across the water whilst I enjoyed 'paddling'in the very pleasantly warmish shallow waters. I regretted not having my swimming togs with me.

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What a gorgeous spot it is and how lovely to see Mark and David enjoying yet another new sport together. Can't wait to get my canoe and join them next time.

With my visiting friends Rob and Jane in the New Year, we visited an amazing garden outside Christchurch, Broadfield Gardens. It was magnificent, with acres and acres of NZ native trees and shrubs and masses of the wonderful kauri trees. I thought they were rare down south, but there were dozens of fairly mature trees. 

The lily garden was spectacular too, with colours I had never known existed among the lily family.

The Summer Times programme has begun and the first Lazy Sunday concert took place as in previous years in the beautiful  Botanical Gardens. There is an interesting new sculpture in one of the ponds.

Back to the Archery Lawn where I spent most Sunday afternoons last summer, always passing the sensational hydrangea beds with such stunning colours on the way to the venue. The amazing thing is that these colours will last throughout the summer.

I was certainly not alone. Thousands turned out for the first two concerts. How heavenly it is to sit and relax under the huge trees listening to music and watching people!

Not only did we have concerts to enjoy, the World Buskers Festival was also taking place, with shows comparable, if not better than Cirque Soleil. They were awesome.

Jesus Christ Superstar Musical started at the end of Novemer. What a show! Probably the best musical performance I have ever seen ( I have seen JCS three times)! It was so good, I went straight home and booked to go again at the end of the season, one week ago. If anything, it was even better, though it is hard to beat perfection!
Going to shows in town is a delight on beautiful balmy evenings, when the streets are buzzing with the sound of happy folk enjoying the new bars and cafes in this lovely city I call home.

It's cruise ship time again and so I picked up a group of Turkish tourists from Akaroa for a tour of Christchurch. Lovely group, but not German- speaking as I had been advised. Luckily they had an interpreter with them, and I really enjoyed listening to what struck me as a great language.

The day before I spent with my friends Liz and Brian, and thoroughly enjoyed visiting the Giants House and Garden, particularly the new area I watched being built last year!

It doesn't matter how often one visits this place, it always looks different. The garden was a mass of brilliant colour, especially this fabulous porch.

Enen the walk back down the drive was incredible, with the blaze of colour of the agapanthus flowers, which cast their magnificent shadows on to the scorching tarmac.

Summer has arrived! What a magnificent sunset and view from Cove Cottage where I was lucky enough to stay the night before the tour. So peaceful, with just the dulcet songs of the bellbirds and the lapping of the waves breaking the silence.

Our tour visited Willowbank Wildlife centre, very briefly. We were running late so the leader of the group decided to cut the 45- minute tour to 25! What a tragedy. Just ticking boxes, but learning nothing of some of our wonderful wildlife, from tuatara, to kiwis and luckily the naughty kea, in the photo below. This bird is so clever and is the only alpine parrot in the world. Sadly, numbers are dwindling and it is endangered.

After an exhausting day with the tour, in sweltering 30- degree plus temperatures, we dropped the group back into Akaroa, and after dinner with Liz and Brian, I set off back to town in my little Mazda. We had seen dark, ominous clouds moving over the hills and up the harbour but I had no idea what I was in for! As I got to the first bay, the storm hit with a vengeance. Branches started to crash onto the road, the galeforce winds drove the rain horizontally, buffeting the car so hard that I feared it would tip over, and waves pounded the banks spilling over on to the road. I  momentarily considered turning back, but seeing the debris on the road behind me, carried on. What a journey! I seriously wondered at times if I would make it home. I have never been so terrified. Every corner was a challenge, never knowing if a branch would lay across the road, and with twigs and fir cones crashing on to the roof. I crept around the winding road with the window open so that I could hear if a branch was cracking, ready to fall. Some sharp corners were so dangerous because I had to get round fallen branches on the wrong side of the road! It was a ghastly experience and made worse by the fact that we had seen an accident in Christchurch, where a tourist was trapped under a falling tree and seriously injured. Luckily both he and I live to tell the tale!

How happy I was to get back to Christchurch and make a short stop at Mark and Emma's place, where the streets were littered with rubbish from the bins people had put out to be collected the next day, but which then lay strewn across the roads! Next day we read about the havoc wreaked by the storm. The video footage of it on the Internet is truly scary!

I so appreciated waking to calm and to checking whether my garden had survived.  It had, amazingly, and I picked a super basket of homegrown, organic vegetables to cook up for dinner. It looks as if I will not need to buy many veges this summer. Fantastic! I also have lettuce, spinach, tomatoes and beans ready and green peppers will be around later. I just hope the heatwave predicted will not damage them!

Quite an exciting couple of months!